Monday, 7 November 2016

The Fuss over Article 50 is something to behold really. How something so meaningless can come to dominate the national psyche, even if only for a few days?

The 'Trigger' of Brexit was the referendum, from which there is no re-tying of that Gordian knot.

The Prime Minister will have an easy majority in Parliament to pass any Article 50 Enabling Bill, it is as though everyone has forgotten the large Labour Leave support and DUP support. It is really not in doubt. Plus, failure is a confidence matter for the start of a general election that the current Government would walk with current polling.

However, the real reason it is a nonsense is the posing of the likes of Jeremy Corbyn about Single Market access and such. None of this is in our gift. We voted to Leave the EU, that means the single market and all the other pieces. The only way to keep Single Market Access is to, err, not leave the EU but to stay in all but name.

There is no mandate for this and, moreover, that is a worse position to be in than either staying or leaving fully. With leaving we go gain control of the future, by staying we keep the status quo (for now), half leaving means we get all the bad stuff of EU bureaucracy and none of the political control

The EU nations are determined from everything they have said so far to make it either a stay or go negotiation. Perhaps hoping that stance will force a second referendum or that the punishment beating handed out will deter others from the same path.

What our red lines and negotiating positions are is being really over-analysed in the current febrile environment. Once Article 50 is enabled, it will be a full exit from the EU, bar minor stuff like police information sharing. The EU won't have it any other way.

As usual, our politicians are playing on their hopes about they think people voted for. Vox pops in the country show clearly whenever I see them that Brexit voting people knew what was coming; it is just the metropolitan elite who cling to the hope that somehow that is not so. Neither do these wets realise what having the EU on the otherside of the table means. It means business, it means walking away.

19 comments:

Indeed. A realism that I had not taken on board until you mentioned it in your article today that soft Brexit is not in the UK's gift. We will end up receiving what we are given unless we capitulate on every demand the EU makes. If we don't stick to our guns(that leave means leave regardless) and capitulate we will not have left the EU so the referendum will have been for nothing. Just as the remainers and Brussels want and no doubt expect.

Those that feared leaving the single market voted Remain, albeit reluctantly.

Those that voted Leave meant it. It is now being said that lots of them didn't and that they were confused about the finality of their choice but his finality was made very clear during the referendum debates by the Remain side and even I admit to being scared by it.

I think they're trying to change the name Remain to 'soft' Brexit and we stay fully in the EU in all but name - the 52%, withered by attrition, saying "OK. Whatever. We give up."

The timescale and the detail will be given over to the Europhile majority in the Commons and Lords to shape as they wish - only the renegade tabloid press and a few heroic politicians standing in the way.

The EU has not lost a referendum yet. Even though they have lost about eight already, if you get my drift.

We could still be in when the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own bullshit.

Nobody voted Leave in the hope we would lose the army and CAP but keep open borders and unitary regulations.

I see that Jezza has demanded - demanded! - that we stay inside the customs union. So unable to negotiate agreements with other countries and still hammering developing-world producers. Not even Norway is in the customs union.

Greetings from the former Sultanate Free Port of Melaka/Malacca. Which thrived for generations until the Dutch tried to turn trade into a tax-raising opportunity then had its lunch eaten by (British, open) Singapore.

I fully agree with your conclusions in your third pragraph, we are going to be worn down by attrition. Hence any talk of an early general election is just pure wishful thinking. May and those behind her are hoping that come 2020 we will just not care if Brexit gets left out of any manifesto.

If she really meant what she said she would be here working on getting a simple bill to allow her to invoke Article 50 in the House of Commons before they go off on their Christmas hols. Instead of wandering off for an Indian take away.

The plan is probably to have us permanently in the EU naughty corner as an example for others.

.. and this further confirms my view that in or out, it makes little difference whether we stay or go or half stay.

The problems we face in the UK were not caused by the EU, and wont be fixed by staying - or leaving.To some extent, democratic decisions should be made made as locally as possible and so not being in the EU marginally improves things.But the effect (positive or negative) won't be more than a rounding error and even then arguable.

All of this is a case of nuclear bike sheds imo.Like EK/ND/CU have said we should just leave (after debate in parliament) with no negotiation, not least because we do not have the skills to negotiate in-house.

I look forwards to the british govt trying to fix british problems rather than moaning about staying or leaving europe.

As I've said previously, the country and parliament should be on a war footing because there is no soft brexit and either the U.K. Fails or the EU collapses. Briton can not be allowed to survive outside the EU or there will be a dash for the door. While all the voices you hear from Europe, in the press, are pro EU, the vast majority that I have worked with are just as sick of the whole corrupt institute as the Brits. The whole Brexit referendum was painted (laughably) in the press here as " little Englanders wanting to be a great empire again". But truth will out. The Brexit debate has opened questions on how the hell we got here and this isn't what we signed up for. This has been reflected in the increase in new blogggs questioning the current state of affairs politics, corporate power.....Feeling disenfranchised is not a British phenomenon ( just look how many people are voting for the shredded wheat headed dick in the US (BTW id vote for him just to keep the other lunatic out)). The EU Will Collapse (sooner) if the U.K. Can hang on long enough.With regards the negotiation, All May needs to say is " If the European Market is truly FREE then Briton already meets the quality requirements and those requirements will be replicated here so there will be no change to the current traiding agreement. If the EU wants to impose petty punitive tariffs then the U.K. will respond likewise to entry to our marke. Ps if the French want to sell us repackaged horse meat, in the guise of beef, we will tar all their products with the same brush and ban the lot.Andrew is absolutely correct. Centralization of power in the U.K. to London has been catastrophic to all regions outside the south east. If our politicians had been home dealing with local issues and trying to make their constituencies the best place to live and prosper, instead of spending all there time with their head up their arse in the Westminster bubble, repeating party line verbatim, they would have been better prepared for the fight to come.Centralization doesn't work, in politics or business. You end up with one group completely disconnected from the rest, only concerned with power plays and the placemen left locally saying " I know it doesn't make sense but I don't have the power to change it but I do have the power to arrest you if you don't comply. The promised economies of scale evaporate when both groups have lost sight of the original purpose.Our own politicians and their incompetence is our biggest threat at the moment

If you accept that Boris had a significant impact on the outcome, then I think it's reasonable to think that some leave voters assumed they were opting for his soft version of Brexit. (I.e. Norway).I don't think it's reasonable to disregard all the pro-leave spin and the influence it had.

Since Brexit I have been working with Italians, Portugese & Romanians (both suppliers & employees). Without exception the perception is that Britain has become inward looking and Xenophobic. (An Italian software developer left last week because of the perceived post Brexit Xenophobia and uncertainty - he has moved to Berlin from the South West where we are based).

I don't see this ending well in the medium to long term for London (and by extension the rest of the UK due to the tax outflow).I just don't see London's advantages holding up.The EU are going to charge a fortune if they allow passporting to continue.There are now plenty of English speaking locations that span the EU/Far East time zones (Munich, Amsterdam, Dublin) which are in the EU.The UK's reputation for stability & robust rue of law is being comprehensively trashed as we speak.Heathrow is a mess.I can't see the large number of talented people from all over the world willing to work and live in London continuing to be available due to the aforementioned reputation trashing.

Why would the inward investment continue to flow? This seems pretty bad to me given that the UK has a load of debt and isn't self sufficient in any real respect (not energy or food).

I only see the country getting poorer, higher unemployment, and less spending on health i.e. back to Spam and fewer healthy years for the population.

Wouldn't it be far better to wind back to pre-Lisbon? And stop all further integration?

It would really cheer me up if somebody could paint a logical believable picture of how hard Brexit is going to make things better. (I accept that the EU is a ratchet trap that gradually strangles the sovereign member states).

(Taking back control isn't an argument I buy any more - not since the un-challengable unilateral US extradition treaty came in to force - this was a piece of legislation that was all Westminster's own work and as bad as anything that came out of Brussels).

I've oft' wondered myself, how you, indeed humanity the world over greatly complicate matters and isn't it 'life' to do so? Worrying, getting het up and fretful about stuff, concocting intricacy, barriers put up by you and that are just simply illusory phantoms....

I read this on guido:

"Shadow Warrior • 10 hours ago

Like the maze diagram below, that's it in a nutshell.

Last Wednesday (I think) the Toady programme made the mistake of interviewing the author of Article 50. They were obviously expecting him to go on about how complex it all was and it might take decades, but he obviously hadn't got the memo. He said Article 50 wasn't relevant in this case (it was written to deal with an EU member state that had suffered a coup or revolution, or was in a state of civil war). In his view the only exit mechanism required was "stop paying the fees, stop going to the meetings, and stop following the rules. Within 6 months the other members should have figured out by themselves that you have left."

Funnily enough, we've heard nothing from him since.

69"

end quote.

Why does it have to be so complex?

When it is they [EU/and their cartel Empires], who after all impose on us and enforce their petty rules and meddlesome micromanagement, imprecision - bad law, shitty regulation and red tape - we don't need it, require it nor do we desire it.

So walk away, actually - that the ones still holding the gun to our heads are the UK establishment remoaners - the EU is too immersed in piling up its own funeral pyre...Sod them, and two fingers to Brussels and let Britain be a sovereign nation once again, how hard can it be - Iceland can do it and with a population of 300K. Japan does OK, as do New Zealand and the Aussies - though I cannot perceive what the hell Canada was up to.

A few excerpts from Boris's Telegraph articles in the run up to the referendum

There is only one way to get the change we need, and that is to vote to go, because all EU history shows that they only really listen to a population when it says No.

As time goes on, I find more and more people can see that Britain would have a great future outside the EU – trading freely with the EU and the rest of the world, while engaging fully at an intergovernmental level with all the political and diplomatic questions in Europe.

As Dyson points out, tariffs would mean the Germans would be cutting their own throats. It won’t happen.

His predictions for the future...The British government immediately launched a highly effective and popular campaign across the Continent to explain that this was not a rejection of “Europe”, only of the supranational EU institutions; and a new relationship was rapidly forged based on free trade and with traditional British leadership on foreign policy, crime-fighting, intelligence-sharing and other intergovernmental cooperation.

Talk of capital flight is nonsense. London will remain a leading financial centre outside the EU and banks will still want to be headquartered in Britain due to low tax rates.

The language was much more soft Brexit than what is actually happening.

Al, at the risk of playing trivial definitions games, nothing you quote there has any hint of "soft Brexit". Soft Brexit is code for staying in the EEA. Boris' comments there relate to free trade, which can take a number of forms.

Theresa May going off to India sends a strong message to remoainers and the EU to say we're looking at the rest of the world beyond Europe for trade. India is the fastest growing economy too which helps so I disagree with Barnacle Bill above. It's not a waste of time; if all we have to do to leave the EU is to stop paying the subs then it's actually a very good move. Perhaps Article 50 is just a red herring.

I agree most Europeans I meet think Britain is horrid now; but then so do lots of remoaners. This is called confirmation-bias.

Europe is a disaster zone, no one wants to move to Amsterdamn as there is no financial services base there, ditto Berlin. These are not long-term threats.

They are short term threats, so some people leave, aw sucks poor us. We made a grown up decision and we get that some people wont like it. Others will.

In the long term, UK culture is THE world leading culture on Earth - Art, Music, Sport, Law, Language. We will suffer a dent from vengeful EU politico's who will stir their own populations to blame future recessions on Brexit etc. But long-term, we win. Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

EK relax! The court case does not mean it is all over. I am reading the media coverage and so much of the analysis is nonsense. The court is right that the government cannot in effect undo the ECA. But Parliament will, whether before an election or after. Tory remainer MPs would be mad to hold up Brexit given their manifesto committment to uphold the result and to go against a significant number of their own membership. Labour can't decide what the party line will be, but there are plenty of Outers in that party too.

My dinner last night was interrupted by a very rude arrogant Belgian who decided to tell me that my country had done a very stupid thing. He claimed to have been following the issues closely but was really shocked when I told him that legislation can be pushed through Parliament very quickly when need be. He also said that "Europe" would be annoyed if we took our time over leaving. I shrugged.

@Al: Wouldn't it be far better to wind back to pre-Lisbon? And stop all further integration?

Maybe maybenot but it is completely irrelevant as that is not even on the table even if we remained. Please don't say but we could reformfrom the inside - that was the refrain for pver 30 years and things became progressively worse.